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How to start an Ecommerce website in 10 steps ?

In this digital age, starting an ecommerce website is the perfect decision any business should take to beat competition since it’s a matter of survival as well.

If you own a physical retail store or not, it is must to get an online store in your name to reach out your products to millions of customers all over the world.

However, to build any successful business, you need a good business plan. Follow the steps to start your online business.

1. Select the product or service of your niche

Online business has advantage for your business to access millions of customers, but also has the challenge to face thousands of other vendors selling similar products like yours online. Checklist below will help customers to buy your product compared to other websites.

Find a niche for your product, which is unique and stand apart.
Get a certification for your product which will give more confidence for your customers to choose over competitors.
Do a thorough research of your competitor’s products and identify the drawbacks. Make sure your website provide those products or services that your competitors don’t.

2. Register website address (domain name)

Search for a unique website address for your online store at WebCastle domain registration website. Check for availability and register a domain name which is short and easy to remember.

3. Choose a web hosting service provider

If you are really serious to run your online store longer, choose a dedicated hosting plan which provides more programming flexibility and power to run your online store. Make sure hosting company that you choose, gives you right support at the right time.

4. Partner with Webcastle

There are many of ecommerce websites ready to compete with yours. So your ecommerce website should be fully functional, creative and user-friendly. Moreover, it should be mobile responsive and should be viewable in all mobile and desktop devices.

Consult our experienced industry leading experts, to get design and develop top quality ecommerce website for your store. As an industry leader in ecommerce for last 11 years, we have helped our clients to take their business to grow to the next level. Our good portfolio in diversified niche itself says it all.

5. Select an Ecommerce software platform

There are plenty of open source ecommerce platforms available in market today. Talk to our ecommerce consultants and choose a right platform for your online store. Top Industry leading ecommerce platforms to choose from are:

Magento

The Benefits of Magento are:

1. User friendly and easy to use.

2. Open source platform and customizable.

3. Thousands of plugins/extensions to upgrade

4. Free extensions available to sell on social media platforms

CScart

The Benefits of CScart are:

1. A rich out-of-the-box set of features.

2. Inbuilt content manager

3. One-page checkout - a clear and comprehensible overview of all purchase.

4. Multi-Vendor and Ultimate editions which can manage a few different stores from one back end.

5. Powerful promotion system.

6. Exclusive features for eCommerce which missing in many other shopping carts.

Opencart

The Benefits of OpenCart are:

1. Supports unlimited number of products, categories, customers and transactions.

2. Thousands of templates and designs to select

3. Search engine friendly, so that you may optimize OpenCart store and amplify business performance;

4. Automatic image resizing;

5. Free lifetime support and updates.

6. Register with a merchant account

Register with the payment gateway services such as PayPal, Ccavenue and Payu money , so that your customers can make the payment online using credit card/ debit card or internet banking.

Whichever merchant you might have registered, WebCastle can integrate with the ecommerce platform that you have chosen in previous step.

7. Choose a shipping service

Check if shipping API is available for the courier services that you plan to ship your products. Most of shipping companies like FedEx, DHL and Blue dart provide API for shipment tracking and printing labels. A few of them provide API for rates display as well. WebCastle team will integrate the available shipping modules API to your online store. In case of weight based shipping, our team can configure shipping module to make it run seamlessly for your customers.

8. Create content and upload your project

Create catchy and professional content for your website. User friendly navigation and descriptions for categories and products makes all difference to make your website stand apart from your competitors. Revisiting customers are the backbone of your online store business. So do everything to make sure your website provides every support and information to your site visitors to do their shopping with ease and an enjoyable experience. Finally, upload all your products to right categories with high quality images, accurate pricing and necessary descriptions and specifications.

9. Launch

Congratulations!

Once, your website has been tested and products and categories verified, it’s time to launch. After launching, WebCastle will test again to make sure orders, payment and shipment tracking works perfect along with other functionalities.

10. Market Online

Irrespective of the business that you own, it’s important to keep your name over social media and market online. Create an account in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Spread the news of launch of your website and announce offers and coupons to all subscribers of your social media page. Make sure there is a link back to your website from every social media account page that you own.